Are ethics a waste of time?

In the final few weeks of the bizarre 2016 US Presidential election the craziness seemed to grow exponentially. Just one of the numerous seriously weird aspects was the behaviour of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James (‘Jim’) Comey, who seemed hell-bent on handing the Presidency to Donald Trump on a plate. 

The FBI had investigated Hillary Clinton’s extensive use of a private (non-secure, non-government) email server but declared in July 2016 that there were no grounds to take further action against her and closed the case after admonishing her for being ‘excessively careless’. She had told investigators that she always kept her computer in secure locations but did not appear to understand that emails could be hacked into no matter where her computer was physically located. To put it charitably this was an alarming, astonishing level of naivety from the next potential leader of the free world.

Then, equally astonishing, the FBI re-opened the investigation less than a month before the election, having discovered a laptop belonging to a discredited former Democratic Party official, the estranged husband of one of Mrs Clinton’s closest aides, which apparently contained 10,000s of emails relevant to the case. Finally, just a few days before the election, Comey announced that these emails contained no new relevant evidence and that the case was closed once again.

Many people, including reputedly Mrs Clinton herself, blame Comey for her election defeat. Doubtless many of them were beset with savage schadenfreude when on 9th May 2017, less than 4 months after Trump’s inauguration, the new President fired Comey without warning whilst he was visiting an FBI recruitment event in Los Angeles. 

What on earth was going on over this period, and why?! 

These and many other fascinating but sobering revelations are the subjects of Comey’s powerful recent book ‘A Higher Loyalty – Truth, Lies and Leadership’, which makes a passionate and compelling case for ethical leadership in all human activities, graphically highlights the painful sacrifices involved, and lifts the lid in an honest, non-partisan manner on the behaviours of the so-called good and the great. 

The book is both gloomy and uplifting, because it describes real people, warts and all. It shines a light on goodness and evil, decency and mindless selfishness, all of which are demonstrated repeatedly through commission and omission by flawed, ordinary human beings, albeit in some cases people with extraordinary talents.

Gloomy parts:

·       Everything that sensible, ethical, honest, open-minded people’s instincts tell them about Donald Trump is true. The man is a liability – for America, for democracy, and for the rest of the free world. He is doing, and will continue to do, great damage whilst he remains in office. The benefits of his tenure which his supporters and voters point to in desperate or defiant self-justification come at an unpalatable cost.

·       Many corporate and faith leaders, plus ordinary people, who voted for Trump and continue to support him are putting narrow short-term transactional interests ahead of long-term stability and strength. Those who express strong positive values, religious or otherwise, are demonstrating brazen hypocrisy. The ends never justify the means.

·       Tribalism is doing terrible damage to America – the same is true elsewhere of course. When people of conscience fail to speak up or act ethically because it would bring them into conflict with their own tribe they betray themselves and everyone else. Two areas of self-destructive tribalism which Comey identifies are a) the obvious, increasingly polarised partisan hatred between Republican and Democrat political viewpoints; and b) continuing racism reflected in law enforcement, often perhaps inadvertently (Comey describes how President Obama once pointed this out to him personally), creating an understandable though damaging and often illegitimately-expressed sense of grievance and violent response from the African-American and Hispanic communities.

·       The Americans have hard evidence of the wide and deep extent of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. Putin was determined to get Trump elected and to ensure that Mrs Clinton (whom he hates for speaking out against him) was not – two separate, but closely related, objectives. I think it is likely, though of course no-one will publicly admit this unpalatable fact, that Trump would not have won without Russian subversion.

·       The Bush Administration successfully manipulated Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to approve illegal rendition and torture (black ops) as part of the fight against terrorism post-9/11. When the DOJ subsequently reversed the decision during Comey’s tenure as Deputy Attorney General (i.e. Deputy Head of the DOJ) Vice President Dick Cheney and his senior staff, with the acquiescence of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, tried to circumvent the decision and engineer the continued use of illegal and unethical methods of interrogation, which did great damage to America’s global reputation and which had been long abandoned by US internal law enforcement authorities as there was ample evidence that it was utterly ineffective.

·       Doing the right thing, or what you sincerely believe to be the right thing, often comes at huge cost and requires courage and sacrifice, which means that most people avoid it like the plague! You are guaranteed to be misunderstood, vilified, rejected, and often despised for it. Standing up for truth, justice and righteousness is incredibly difficult, and unpopular. The outcomes are always uncertain, regular defeat is to be expected, and you yourself are flawed and error-prone so people of malice, hypocrisy, ignorance and/or naivety, or whom you otherwise upset, will obsessively zero in on your weaknesses and mistakes instead of seeing the essential bigger picture. Criticising others without humility, hypocritically, and without engaging, listening deeply, or showing an understanding and acceptance of the true issues, nuances and complexities which make real life so tough is like falling off a log – it’s a mindless, self-destructive, zero sum mass participation sport which reinforces only the negative. Breaking out of that vicious circle requires grit, resilience, patience and determination.

Uplifting parts:

·       President Obama, whom Jim Comey admits as a registered Republican that he did not support when he was elected in 2009, is indeed the extraordinary leader and humble, quality human being whom millions of people globally believe him to be. It would be fair to say that Comey came to love and respect him; his description of their final private meeting before Obama left office is deeply moving. Obama is flawed, like the rest of us, but in practice he is as good as it gets. His principal weaknesses were (over-)confidence which could appear as arrogance and upset his political opponents, and occasional delays in decision-making, which could make him look weak and indecisive. However, Comey points out Obama’s remarkable ability to draw out all strands of knowledge and opinion from other people to try to get the best possible collective understanding and decisions. What a contrast with the likes of Trump, who have an insecure need to get their own way because “I am the boss, so what I say is right by definition – your job is to agree with it”?

·       There are always wonderful people around who have the courage of their convictions and try to do the right thing, often quietly and in an unsung way. At all levels in society there are people of integrity who care for others, even those they disagree with.

·       There will always be those who recognise you, respect you, and love you deeply for the ethical stance you take, and you must keep on telling yourself that, seeking them out, clinging onto them, and onto that knowledge when all appears dark and hopeless.

·       Ethical, truthful, honest and wholesome vision still has the power to unite people and to transform their lives. It is worth fighting for, and it is imperative that people of integrity have the courage and confidence to do so, whatever the cost and however much they are misunderstood and castigated for it.

Those are some of the key messages from this book, which is worth reading. I now understand Jim Comey’s actions, and respect him for them. At their last meeting, Obama told Comey that he had picked him as FBI Director because of his integrity and commitment to public service, and that he still felt the same, even after the extraordinary, painful saga over Hillary Clinton’s emails, the defeat of the candidate he (Obama) had vigorously campaigned for, and Trump’s election.

I have at least one disagreement with Comey. At the end of the book he says he chooses to be optimistic about the future of America and of democracy, because both will endure and surpass individual leaders, political movements and crises. That may or may not prove correct, and I accept that he is in a better position to judge it than I am. My view is that humankind is engaged in a battle between good and evil, much of the time without realising it. Much of the ‘evil’ comes from the reality that we are highly evolved animals, but animals nonetheless. Too often we hijack our higher cognitive abilities for selfish, or tribal, animal objectives, yet delude ourselves that we are logical and rational. We are nothing of the sort.  I am not convinced that we will overcome the odds but I am committed to try to do so in my own small way.

I have decided to dedicate what remains of my career to teaching and instilling in leaders and organisations the purposes, values, attitudes and behaviours of the Top 1% most successfully consistent. I firmly believe that the evidence points towards the substantial all-round benefits of following these principles – for relationships, health, societal well-being, and ultimately for material security (not necessarily the same as wealth). I recognise the dangers, pitfalls and sacrifices for me personally – there have been many already en route, some of them savage - there will be more, and some are already threatened. Choosing this sort of road is a guarantee of creating misunderstanding and hostility, not least because a) it is deeply threatening to many people's sense of certainty about their purposes, values, attitudes and behaviours; and b) because each of us is such an imperfect medium through which to attempt to transmit these messages. Therefore trying to lead by example is much more effective than talking, tempting as the latter may be.

One of the greatest challenges each of us faces is to be open – to listen actively, as Jim Comey puts it. As Stephen Covey defined it in the first of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, seek first to understand, then to be understood. This means tolerating, even embracing, other people’s viewpoints, however misguided or uncomfortable you feel them to be, in order to broaden your own understanding and to make wiser decisions. For the last 10 years I have lived my life as closely as I can according to the Stockdale Paradox, a critical Top 1% principle:

You must maintain unwavering faith that you can, and you will prevail, in the end, which you can never afford to lose, whilst confronting the most brutal realities of your current situation, whatever they are, and however unpleasant they are.

However painful it may be, this is the essence of sanity and long-term success. Brutal as my own journey has been so far, I intend to take my game to the essential next level with deep humility, selflessness, and concern for other people ahead of myself, even when they do not recognise it, thank me for it, or comprehend my actions and motives – the polar opposite sometimes, sadly.

In finalising this blog I Googled Jim Comey and discovered that he is still mired in controversy over his actions in the 2016 Presidential Election, the effectiveness and integrity of the FBI during his tenure as Director, and apparent lying by his Deputy, Andy McCabe, based on discrepancies in their respective testimonies given to investigators. Jim Comey made enemies on both sides of the political spectrum, apparently by trying to do the right thing according to what he called a higher loyalty to an absolute truth and to the Department of Justice and FBI as key pillars of the US democratic system. He may yet be proven to have lied (though I suspect not) or to have been naive, foolish and incompetent (I suspect not either, but we will see - in the mad world we inhabit, absolutely anything is possible, and events make fools of us all). My conclusion from reading his book is that he has placed himself at the eye of a perfect storm as a result of his ethical convictions, something which in many ways he deeply regrets as it has caused him and his family great pain, but about which he believes passionately that he has no choice. On a trivial scale by comparison, I relate to that.